


The Time and the Place

by betweentheheavesofstorm



Category: Timeless (TV 2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Firefly Setting, Alternate Universe - Space, Claustrophobia, F/M, Feelings, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-11
Updated: 2018-06-11
Packaged: 2019-05-20 18:49:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,129
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14900003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/betweentheheavesofstorm/pseuds/betweentheheavesofstorm
Summary: ‘Maybe you can do both now,’ he adds. ‘By day Lucy Preston is an esteemed academic; by night she’s a covert secret agent working with a ragtag crew to foil Rittenhouse.’‘Don’t be ridiculous. I’ll never be esteemed. I can’t even get tenure.’A Firefly-ish AU in which three university professors and an ex-soldier turn to smuggling books.





	The Time and the Place

**Author's Note:**

> A shamelessly indulgent AU? Why yes, it is.

Two months ago if you’d asked Lucy Preston what her future looked like, the answer would have involved a whole lot of books. In a way, she wasn’t wrong. Books are still her main problem. Except, instead of having to plough through them in the hope of finding something relevant to her latest research paper, they’re the reason she’s hiding in a secret compartment of a stolen spaceship.

The compartment had been Rufus’s idea. The _Lifeboat_ had been a smuggler’s ship before they found it, with two hidden compartments behind a false wall in the loading bay. One had seized shut, but the other was perfectly useable and big enough to fit two people. Well, two people at a squeeze. Wyatt’s elbow is digging painfully into her ribcage, but she can’t risk asking him to move. The officers that had hailed them are already aboard and being received by Jiya. Given how clearly Lucy can hear them, it would follow that they’ll be able to hear even the smallest scuffle.

The front they’re using is flimsy at best: Rufus inherited the _Lifeboat_ from a relative and is on his way to try and sell it. Jiya’s there as his co-pilot. Lucy and Wyatt, with no technical expertise that would explain their presence, have therefore been confined to hiding with the books. It’s not the greatest plan, but it’s the best that they could come up with in five minutes.

Needless to say, Lucy’s not too thrilled about her part in it. She’s practically a sitting duck, and while normally she wouldn’t object to Wyatt’s company, this is a bit much. It’s a lot more difficult to remember all the reasons he shouldn’t be attractive when he is crammed in right next to her. She’s just got to try and focus on what’s happening on the other size of the fake wall.

From the sound of it, Jiya’s doing okay. She’s worked for Connor Mason long enough to be able to hide her feelings. Lucy’s a lot more worried about Rufus. They couldn’t do this without him – he’s a brilliant pilot, technical genius and much-needed voice of sanity – but subterfuge is not exactly his strong suit.

She breathes out, slow and shallow. The voices are getting louder. That makes sense – the hidden compartment is right next to the stairs out of the loading bay – but it’s not helping her stay calm. Sitting in the dark, there’s very little to distract her from the claustrophobia that threatens to send her into a full-out panic.

Out in the loading bay, Jiya’s describing some recent repairs. That’s good; anything technical is safely neutral territory. They might not have flown a ship like this before, but both Rufus and Jiya know enough about what they’re doing to give the illusion of competence.

The voices ascend the stairs and then disappear from earshot. They must be heading up to the bridge, at the other end of the ship. Lucy lets out a breath and suppresses the urge to touch the wall in front of her. The security of knowing there’s a physical barrier between her and the patrol officer grapples with the fear of knowing how close the wall will be.

‘D’you think they’ll buy it?’ she whispers, instead of moving. It would be safer not to talk at all, but she needs something to keep her mind occupied.

‘I don’t know.’ Wyatt has been particularly inscrutable lately and it’s even harder to read his mood in the dark.

‘Can you move your elbow? It’s right in my ribs?’

His arm moves, and now his whole side is pressed against hers. The proximity is extremely distracting, but surprisingly that kind of helps with the claustrophobia.

‘Are you all right?’ he mutters, as if in hindsight.

‘Yeah.’ Breathe in, breathe out. Don’t think about how small the space is or how close the walls are or what will happen if they get caught or what she saw when she walked in on Wyatt and Jessica –

‘Think,’ he says, sounding almost softly amused, ‘all this for three books.’

‘Yeah,’ she says again, and hugs the volumes tighter to her chest. Three books with old leather bindings and yellowing pages containing details of war crimes she can’t imagine. She’s read the first chapter of one and that was enough. If they do make it to their destination she’ll have to confront the rest. Rittenhouse is set on destroying the texts, so they’ve got to make them as widely accessible to as many people as possible.

If they get caught, she’s going to have a fun time coming up with an excuse as to why she’s clutching stolen military records. Even being a historian isn’t going to cut it.

‘Still,’ Wyatt says, ‘what a way to go, huh?’

‘Have you ever done this before?’

‘Which part of this are you referring to? Stealing a smuggling ship or becoming a smuggler myself?’

‘Hiding in a secret compartment.’

‘Oh. No, I haven’t done it before.’

‘What about the other stuff?’

A pause.

‘I’ve stolen ships before.’

‘You were in the war. I guess most of this isn’t new to you.’

He shifts slightly. ‘I was always part of a unit before. I mean – not that you guys aren’t great, but I’m used to having other soldiers watch my back.’

 _Like Jessica_ , Lucy manages not to say. That would be unfair. He’s taken a significant risk, choosing the _Lifeboat_ over his former crew.

‘But, you know,’ he continues, ‘it’s nice to be around people whose lives don’t revolve around conflict.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Jiya, Rufus, you – I can see who you are when you’re not on the run. You all had academic careers. Everyone else that I know was so caught up in the war that they never got over losing it.’

‘Is that why you were so ready to join us?’ Lucy’s mind flashes back to what she overheard Jessica saying. That Wyatt was abandoning the cause. ‘To do something that was different?’

‘It depends how you define _different_. I’m still doing my best to screw Rittenhouse over.’

‘I often wish I’d done more for the war.’ She’s never said this aloud before, but there’s something about the dark and the size of the space that brings it out of her. It doesn’t feel like they’re in the _Lifeboat_ , or anywhere really – the compartment has become a not-space, in which the usual rules of what to say no longer apply. ‘I mean, you’ve heard me talk about my parents. They were very much for sitting it out and seeing what happened. Encouraged me to keep going with my studies.’

‘So that’s why _you’re_ doing this,’ he says, sounding only half-serious. ‘Postponed teen rebellion?’

‘I’d say something more like delayed guilt. Me fighting wouldn’t have changed the outcome – I’d probably have been pretty useless – but I would have done _something.’_

‘Ah, but you might have died before you got that shiny PhD.’

‘Right.’ She leans her head against the wall behind her. Even though it’s not airtight, she gets the feeling that the space wasn’t designed with hiding people in mind.

‘Maybe you can do both now,’ he adds. ‘By day Lucy Preston is an esteemed academic; by night she’s a covert secret agent working with a ragtag crew to foil Rittenhouse.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous. I’ll never be esteemed. I can’t even get tenure.’

‘After this it’ll be a breeze. At least your senior professors won’t shoot you if you mess something up.’

‘Believe me, sometimes I wish they did.’ She idly contemplates bringing Jessica up again, explicitly pressing him to explain himself. It feels like too much effort. Ever since Wyatt found himself aboard the _Lifeboat_ she’s been pinging from one extreme to the other. She didn’t want him at all at first; it was Rufus who decided they needed to have some proper protection. After that it was a matter of liking Wyatt despite herself. He always seemed like he should be such an asshole. He had the looks, bravado and tragic military past to be absolutely unbearable. And yet every time she expected him to be awful, he’d surprise her.

‘They should be heading back soon,’ he says. ‘If everything’s gone okay.’

She nods, and then remembers he can’t see her. ‘Yeah.’

There’s another long pause.

‘I don’t know what I’ll do after this,’ she says. ‘Even assuming the university would take me back; I don’t know that I could go back. What I’d say to my mother…’

‘She’s a tough one?’

‘She’s all about survival, in the most conservative way. And it’s taken me a long time to challenge that, but…I don’t know how you can look at a universe that’s as messed up as this one is and only think of yourself.’

Again, these are not things she’s said to anybody else. She hasn’t been waiting for the right person so much as the right time. And there’s nothing like a radical shift of perspective like becoming an agent of the resistance to make one critical of one’s parents.

‘But, you know, I say that like I’ve always thought that. I haven’t. It’s taken me a long time to realise that what she wanted isn’t always what I should want.’

‘If it helps, I’ve no idea what I’ll do after this either,’ Wyatt says. ‘More of the same, probably, ‘till they catch me and I can spend the rest of my time making friends in jail.’

She’s about to protest when there’s the distant sound of a door opening and the voices return. The officers must have completed their sweep. She stares through the dark, trying to make out the individual voices. The tone, at least, sounds amicable. Jiya is still with them, but there’s no sound of Rufus. Lucy takes that to be a good thing: if they’ve left him that means they haven’t arrested him.

She’s also very suddenly aware of Wyatt’s presence. In the time that they were talking she’d become accustomed to it and now it’s like she’s noticing him all over again. They’ve been skirting round each other ever since running into Jessica; this is the closest they’ve been for a while. It’s all become so exhaustingly convoluted and yet at the same time she doesn’t know how to stop paying attention to all the places where his body is touching hers.

There’s a beeping noise from the far end of the loading bay: the ramp must be descending. Just a few moments more and they’ll be able to leave. After that all that’s left to do is complete the journey, read and reproduce the books and broadcast them across the galaxy without getting caught. Then she has to decide if she’s going to continue with a life of crime or attempt to regain some normality, if that’s even possible. Simple stuff.

For now, though, they seem to be out of the woods. The strange voices have disappeared entirely and from the renewed beeping, the loading ramp is on its way back up. There’s a faint clang as it closes completely and then they can feel the engines kicking back in.

‘Would you look at that,’ Wyatt says quietly, ‘it might be worth becoming a smuggler full time.’

She’s about to respond when there’s a sudden influx of light, and Jiya’s voice saying, ‘You two okay?’

In her haste to get out of the compartment, Lucy springs up too quickly and hits her head on the top of the partition. It stings, but it’s still good to be stumbling out into the wide space of the loading bay.

Wyatt follows, much more cautiously. ‘All good?’

‘Looks like it.’ Jiya moves to replace the panel. Whoever designed the _Lifeboat_ knew what they were doing: it slides back into place and gives no visible sign of being moveable. ‘They commented on the age of the ship a few times but apart from that, they didn’t seem too suspicious.’

‘They’ve got no reason to associate you two with the missing books,’ Lucy says. The pain in her head has already started to subside; it was a glancing blow. ‘And unless anything changed while I was in there, they still don’t know _I_ stole them.’

‘You’re still in the clear,’ Jiya confirms, as they start making their way back up to the bridge. ‘As of the last news report we picked up, your disappearance is still being treated as that of a missing person. Your mom was even in the last broadcast.’

Lucy winces. ‘Let me guess. Something along the lines of how a nice girl like me can’t have been mixed up in anything nefarious.’ Out of the corner of her eye, she catches Wyatt’s smile.

‘Yep. The bad news is that we’re going to have to take a detour. We couldn’t tell them our true course so had to pretend we’d be continuing east. I don’t know if they’ll check up on what tolls we’ve passed through, but for the next couple days I don’t think it’s worth the risk.’

Now it’s Wyatt who looks concerned. ‘How much of a delay is that going to cause?’

Jiya shrugs. ‘All depends. If we have to queue for tolls. If there aren’t any more holdups. At the least we’re looking at four days – two days out of our way, and two days back.’

‘You have to teach me to drive,’ Lucy says, as they enter the bridge. ‘Because I am never getting in that thing again.’

‘I don’t know,’ Wyatt interjects, ‘I think you managed it pretty well.’

‘Just because I was only hyperventilating on the inside.’

‘No offence, Lucy, but I’ve seen your parking,’ Rufus says, leaning back in his chair to look at them. ‘It’s safe to say I’m never letting you have control of the _Lifeboat.’_

‘I can be the janitor, or something. Or maybe your overbearing friend from work who demanded a lift in return or gas money.’

‘It’s not fun,’ Rufus warns. ‘I thought they were going to notice how much my hands were sweating. And they’re only a patrol. I don’t want to think about what happens if we get hailed by anyone more serious.’

‘If that’s it for imminent danger, I’m going to get something to eat,’ Wyatt announces. ‘Call me if there’s another crisis.’ He claps Rufus on the shoulder, nods to Jiya and leaves the bridge without looking at Lucy.

After the time they’ve just spent crammed in next to each other, she can’t really blame him if he wants to steer clear of her. At the same time, though, it leaves her feeling slightly deflated. If she goes after him, does that count as invasive? The poor guy probably just wants a sandwich.

‘What did you two _do_ in there?’ Rufus asks, as Jiya settles into the co-pilot seat.

‘What do you mean?’ Lucy’s unsure if she’s meant to be defensive or not.

‘Wyatt hasn’t looked at you since you got out,’ Jiya confirms. ‘I don’t know if you told your life story or got freaky – ’

‘You’ve seen the size of that compartment, right? We just talked.’

‘Whatever it is, you’re going to have to sort it out. And you know, we’ve got a nice few days on this detour for you to do exactly that.’

‘It’s not like that.’

‘Mmmhm.’

‘I saw him kissing Jessica last week.’ She didn’t mean to say it, but it happens anyway.

That gets Rufus’s attention.

‘Wait, Jessica? Old-army-buddy Jessica? Kissing Wyatt?’

‘Yeah. I guess they were closer than we thought.’

‘Have you spoken to him about it?’ Jiya asks.

‘No.’

‘Maybe you should.’

‘You know what, I’m gonna take a nap.’ Lucy surrenders, backing out of the room and into the corridor. Once outside, though, she doesn’t head for her cabin.

 

Wyatt’s halfway through the process of making a sandwich when she gets to the kitchen. He’s using the very last of the bread, but given the day they’ve had it doesn’t merit pointing out. He stiffens slightly when he sees her, but doesn’t say anything.

Lucy clears her throat. ‘I’m not trying to start anything. And this isn’t me holding you to something, or … I just think it would be best if we were on the same page, going forward.’

Moving slowly, he puts the bread down. ‘Okay.’

‘I heard what Jessica said about this job. I know you told me it wasn’t what I thought, when I saw you two together – but Wyatt, she said this was pointless. And I know you’re planning to rejoin her when this is over – ’

‘Whoa, whoa. When did I say that?’

‘You said you’d be doing more of the same. Resistance work, right? But resistance work that has a _point.’_

‘Do you think I’d be doing this – putting my neck on the line for three goddamn _books_ – if I thought it wasn’t worth it?’ His voice rises with every word.

‘I don’t know! You said it yourself; you don’t know what to do with yourself if you’re not fighting. And how you live your life is your business. But this can’t mean nothing. I – Jiya, Rufus and me – we’ve thrown so much away for this.’

‘And I haven’t?’

‘That’s not what I meant.’

‘Lucy, I…’ the words seem to constrict in his throat, and he tries again. ‘I’m not going back to Jessica. I don’t know if I’ll regroup with any other soldiers, but I’m through working with her. We’ve got too much personal history. What you saw – that was all her.’

‘Oh.’ She’s not really sure how to respond to that.

‘It’s complicated. But all you need to know is that she asked me to go with her, and I said no.’

‘Okay.’

‘What we’re doing here – that’s what I’m committed to.’

She nods. Somehow it’s even more difficult to breathe than it was in the container. ‘I just … came here to clear that up. I should probably get some sleep.’ She turns to leave the kitchen.

She’s halfway along the corridor when Wyatt catches up with her.

‘Lucy.’

She stops. Watches him grapple with the right words.

‘I should have done this before,’ he finally says. ‘I just got a bit… thrown, by everything.’

‘Done what before?’

That’s when he kisses her. For all his ability to monologue, he’s still more of an action person.

She’s thought about what it would be like to kiss Wyatt loads of times. It’s difficult to look at that jawline and not want to trace your fingers along it – at least, for her, anyway. Yet now that it’s happening, his arms wrapping around her and pulling her close, she can’t help feeling that somehow it’s already familiar.

‘Just so you know,’ she mutters, as they pull apart, ‘Rufus totally called this.’

 

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first time I've tried writing Timeless fic but I binged all of the first series in about a week and now spend my days stalking Matt Lanter's Twitter to find out if it's been renewed or not.
> 
> Feel free to come say hi on [tumblr](http://www.betweentheheavesofstorm.tumblr.com) !


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